Daniel is a quiet, intense PARIAH operative who primarily spies and steals information for the group. A former street thug who was given a second chance by a teacher and a probation officer, he now wants to pay it forward to others.

portrayed by
Wentworth Miller

Pretty much everything you need to know about Daniel Partington is that his mother was an alcoholic and he never knew his father. At a young age he was running the streets, shoplifting, boosting stereos, and hanging around with gangs, even though his natural tendencies were against gang life. He particularly had an aversion to drugs, fearing, perhaps rightly, that they were responsible for his absent father and knowing for certain that the road his mother had gone down was not one worth going down. Often jumped or taken advantage of by the other gang members, Daniel was forced to rob even from them.

Eventually, he got caught. He had missed too much school, he had extended himself too far, his mother hadn't left the apartment in weeks. It was only by chance that Daniel didn't end up in a juvenile facility - a probation officer saw that he was not cut out for gang life, and gave him extra attention. Although Daniel resisted at first, and had to spend more than a few nights in detention, eventually he began to see that perhaps he did have something to offer himself. The probation officer and one of Daniel's schoolteachers teamed up to help the young man get back up to speed and have a chance at a decent life. He was still wild, still hanging with the wrong crowd, but he was no longer in danger. The authority he had resisted and ignored his whole life began to seem legitimate to him, and he responded to it almost with relief.

When the bomb went off, he was trapped in a collapsed building, which saved him from radiation sickness, but would have suffocated him if he hadn't, stumbling around oxygen-deprived and dizzy, discovered that he could walk through the wall. Unfortunately for him, this first time, he walked through his clothes too and ended up wandering the postapocalyptic streets naked until he figured out how to get back in and retrieve them. His phasing ability developed quickly - very quickly - which he desperately needed to avoid both the bullets and the choking debris storms. It helped him survive and even prosper - he was able to scavenge things from buildings nobody else could figure a way into. And eventually, once he learned to use it on others, it was an easy way to knock out enemies.

But he never considered even for a moment complying with the repressive government regulations. He knew from his prior experience that legitimate authority flows from a productive relationship with the governed - whether it is the love families share or the partnership of teacher and student. It was a very short step sideways to join a freedom fighter's group. Still a little behind educationally, he has a streetwise way and is an unparalleled infiltrator.

Phasing - Daniel has the ability to turn himself, and other matter that he can touch, intangible. His training has permitted him so that he no longer accidentally phases out of his clothes or drops what he's carrying, and it has increased the amount of mass he can turn intangible to about 140 kilograms (a bit more thn 300 pounds). While intangible, Daniel (and anything he is carrying) cannot make noise in the 'unphased' world. He can travel through walls, or even through the ground, though without light, getting lost is easy. (Although he thinks he might be able to walk on air eventually, right now he can only ascend by the normal means of stairs, elevators, climbing, and so on.) Electricity can still shock him, though the effect is somewhat muted by a lack of grounding - passing accidentally through a wire in a wall is painful but not more debilitating than a beesting.

Suffocation - By touching and turning a foe intangible, Daniel cuts off their supply of air. What they try to breathe will go right through them. This can knock a normal person out in seconds. It can kill, though Daniel usually does not need to go that far. Note that when Daniel turns someone intangible, he is still tangible to them himself. If Daniel is phasing a friend, the friend needs to bring their own air supply. Daniel himself cannot presently breathe while phasing, and must also carry an air supply, though this ability may develop with time. (The fact that he can still hear while phasing demonstrates this.)

Item Phasing - Daniel has, with practice, worked out how to quickly phase an item (or a part of one) while still remaining intangible. This is ideal for disarming people with weapons - all he has to do is reach out and grab the gun that can't hurt him, and it will slip right through the gunman's fingers. Also, pipes or canisters under pressure can easily become explosive for Daniel - one touch and they're spewing their contents through the hole that now exists. He is not quite adept at phasing out pieces of wall or support beams - for one thing, they're really heavy to move even once he has them intangible, for another, it's hard for him to figure out where exactly he needs to turn them intangible in the first place.